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Rancher Labs vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

Rancher Labs and Splunk are both solutions in the Container Management category. Rancher Labs is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.8, while Splunk is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.7. Rancher Labs holds a 7.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Splunk’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Rancher Labs users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.
Rancher Labs
Read 14 Rancher Labs reviews
  • 3,144 Views
  • 1,162 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
Splunk Observability Cloud
Read 56 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews
  • 103 Views
  • 57 Comparison Views
94% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and Rancher Labs are key competitors in data analysis and infrastructure management. Splunk is notably strong in providing data-driven insights, while Rancher Labs offers efficient container management, showcasing distinct capabilities.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud offers advanced log searching, real-time issue resolution, and custom dashboard creation. Meanwhile, Rancher Labs provides user-friendly Kubernetes management, seamless container deployments, and a strong emphasis on open-source tools.

Room for Improvement: Splunk Observability Cloud could enhance cost management, expand third-party integrations, and improve its user interface. Rancher Labs might focus on improving multi-cloud support, strengthening security features, and offering better observability tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk supports on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments, with mixed reviews on customer service due to response delays. Conversely, Rancher Labs benefits from robust community support, but its customer service is seen as limited, reflecting its open-source foundation.

Pricing and ROI: Rancher Labs' open-source model reduces licensing costs, appealing to Kubernetes-centric organizations. Splunk, while considered expensive due to data volume-based pricing, is often justified by its advanced features. Both solutions deliver substantial ROI through enhanced visibility and streamlined operations.

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To learn more, read our detailed Rancher Labs vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: June 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Rancher Labs vs. Splunk Observability Cloud
June 2025
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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.5
Rancher Labs provides efficient open-source solutions like OpenShift with significant cost savings and an eight out of ten rating.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud enhances visibility and efficiency, resulting in faster resolutions, reduced costs, and improved KPI performance for users.
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Rancher Labs report
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk Observability Cloud report
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Rancher Labs' customer service and technical support are praised for responsiveness, with users valuing community forums for assistance.
Sentiment score
7.4
Splunk Observability Cloud support is responsive but needs faster response times and deeper expertise for improved service quality.
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Rancher Labs report
Problem resolution typically takes between two and five days, which isn't very helpful.
Support from Splunk is not very helpful because Splunk doesn't have a dedicated APM; they only have one APM engineer in Korea.
They did not have a clear answer.
For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk Observability Cloud report
AL
ES
MM
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Rancher Labs offers robust scalability for small to large teams, with effective deployment and minor automation improvements suggested.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud offers scalable and flexible solutions, though concerns about cost and complexity persist among users.
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Rancher Labs report
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
The issue is mainly about pricing because if they want to monitor more, it costs money.
For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk Observability Cloud report
AL
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
ES
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.7
Rancher Labs is praised for its stability and reliability, though users note complexity and upgrade challenges.
Sentiment score
8.3
Splunk Observability Cloud is mostly stable and reliable, with users experiencing minimal issues and frequent alert notification management.
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Rancher Labs report
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk Observability Cloud report
AL
ES
MM
 

Room For Improvement

Rancher Labs needs improved stability, integrations, user-friendly features, enhanced security, multicloud support, and better community and development resources.
Users seek better integration, customization, scalability, and performance in Splunk Observability Cloud, alongside improved support and navigation features.
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Rancher Labs report
It would be beneficial if server details could be retrieved directly in synthetic monitoring.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Improvements in dashboard configuration, customization, and artificial intelligence functionalities are desired.
For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk Observability Cloud report
MV
MM
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
 

Setup Cost

Rancher Labs provides a cost-effective open-source container orchestration with optional paid support, seen as competitively mid-range priced.
Splunk Observability Cloud's pricing is competitive and flexible, offering annual licenses with a 14-day free trial for evaluation.
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Rancher Labs report
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
Splunk is a little expensive, however, it is in line with the current market pricing.
Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive.
For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk Observability Cloud report
 

Valuable Features

Rancher Labs offers user-friendly Kubernetes management, seamless integrations, and supports GitOps and virtual machine management with promising potential.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers real-time monitoring, intuitive dashboards, and machine learning for comprehensive analytics and performance optimization.
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Rancher Labs report
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
The solution overall is very valuable for me. The time to value was immediate.
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk Observability Cloud report
MV
AL
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
 

Categories and Ranking

Rancher Labs
Ranking in Container Management
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Data Storage for Kubernetes (2nd)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (8th), Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Rancher Labs is 7.9%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.6%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

RyanVassallo - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers an open-source version along with a good UI
The product has multiple good features. One of the solution's good features is that it is the GitOps functionality known as Rancher fleet, which is used for continuous delivery. The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or on-premises, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations. The tool also has a feature that is still kind of maturing, but I think it has very good potential. This new feature is named Harvester, which is allows users to have virtual machines managed by Kubernetes engine. This is very new technology in the market. I think that Harvester needs to mature as a product, and I think that in the future, it will be very powerful. You have one tool that does many things for you.
Read full review
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.
Read full review
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
37%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Rancher Labs?
The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or the company, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rancher Labs?
The cost is reasonable since it's open-source. Rancher effectively addresses container orchestration trends, especially for those with some Kubernetes knowledge.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Rancher Labs?
While Rancher Labs provides some level of security, it's not considered very robust. We found it to offer basic security features, which met some of our requirements, but we also relied on other op...
See all answers
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
See all answers
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time
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Compared 4% of the time
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Compared 5% of the time
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Compared 4% of the time
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Compared 3% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Rancher Labs
June 2025
Rancher Labs reportDownload Rancher Labs product report
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Observability Cloud
June 2025
Splunk Observability Cloud reportDownload Splunk Observability Cloud product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

Rancher Labs build innovative, open source software that makes it easy to deploy and manage containers in production on any infrastructure. We enable organizations to accelerate all aspects of their software development pipeline, from writing and testing code to running complex microservices-based applications.

Rancher, our flagship container management platform, allows users to easily manage all aspects of running containers in development and production environments, on any infrastructure. With well over four million downloads, Rancher has quickly become the tools of choice for teams serious about running containers in production. This includes large enterprises such as Sony, IBM, Tyco, Align Technologies and more.

Rancher Labs

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?
  • Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
  • Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
  • Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
  • Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
  • Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
  • Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.
Why consider this for ROI?
  • Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
  • Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
  • Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
  • Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk
 

Sample Customers

Albert Heijn, Bell, BMC, Samsung, WindStream, Johnson & Johnson
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Buyer's Guide
Rancher Labs vs. Splunk Observability Cloud
June 2025
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